Eurovision 2007 (Finland)

[the unforgiven]

forre, here you go : State of the Ark
btw, my favourite is Clamour for Glamour it rocks my socks
you're right they have their own glam-rock-chabada-style (and no, chabada means nothing lol)

thanks for the CDs links

[forre]

the unforgiven, Super! Thanks!
*downloading*

[the unforgiven]

forre, you're welcome I hope you'll like this one as much as I appreciate it

[Talyubittu]

Good contest this year! I really liked the stage and the setup! It's always beauitful...

I really think Serbia deserves first place. Amazing performance!

[zebu]

i loved french entry and all ppl on this eurosong party i was at. we all put in in top5 and it finished 22nd or smthing

[forre]

zebu, The entry was funny but the guys lost their courage on stage. They were too nervous and didn't perform well at all.

[Станко394]

Originally Posted by forre

zebu, The entry was funny but the guys lost their courage on stage. They were too nervous and didn't perform well at all.

..plus French song didn't have [at least to me] some special melody.

[zebu]

Originally Posted by Станко394

..plus French song didn't have [at least to me] some special melody.

special melody...every song more or less has a special melody. except maybe when its a copy of an older song

well to me it was really cool and i listen to it a lot last few days. its funny, upbeat, kinda indie popish. super lovely. instant mood raiser. and itll be very good for future parties. ............je cours, je cours, je cours, i've lost l'amour, l'amour, l'amour
je suis perdu, here without you

but course we all knew no chance for win...

[spyretto]

Originally Posted by haku

Just for information, Scooch has just entered the new UK Top 40 directly at #5, you can bet that in the end Scooch is gonna sell much more records and make much more money than the winner Marija Serifovic

Not quite, they were #138 last week ...that speaks volumes about the idiots who listen to this crap, they're the same ones who picked the song to represent the UK over the more contemporary artists that took part in the preselection process..last time Scooch did anything before that song was in the year 2000...they were a manufactured tv band that lasted exactly for 2 years.
It's this crazy dichotomy in the UK music scene...you have the absolute great and the absolute dire...and the dire outsells the great for a very short period of time they're in the spotlight...then they go back to their 9-5 jobs.

The other side of the same coin is of course Verka ( for the Eastern bloc masses ). But her career will outlast Schooch's by 20 to 1.

Thank you. It was nice to see it without Wogan wittering all over it. Normally it takes until the voting before he's pissed, but he must have started on the Baileys early this year

No, this time Wogan was releatively well-behaved...he made some bad remarks here and there but that was it. I also heard the Greek commentators and they were quite good. They said that simplicity (Serbia) beat extravagance ( Ukraine ) and that Serbia absolutely deserved it. Their spontaneous reaction when Malta gave 12 points to the UK was: "Lord Jesus Christ!".
But overall much more energetic and positive than Wogan imo.
I think the public's opinion in the UK is not so much withdraw from the contest but more like "we're never gonna win it, at least send something decent next year, so that we don't have to hide behind the sofa when the UK is on" Which is a positive attitude imo.

Anyways, it was very gayist show, 1,2,3, were all won by gays peoples and number 4 could be a gays too but I no sure.

[la aurora]

Originally Posted by spyretto

Anyways, it was very gayist show, 1,2,3, were all won by gays peoples and number 4 could be a gays too but I no sure.

We can't be sure with n1 as those are only rumors and looks that give hints in this case but n2 and n3 are straight people. Danilko has a gf who played his 'mom' there in Helsinki, Serebro girls sound even more straight than they should at times

When it comes to ones that voted, I wouldn't be so sure either

1) Doubt there are so many lesbians in Europe, was mostly 'touching ballad' vote imho, same vote other ballads got in previous years
2) Verka got fun and protest votes. He's not 'real' enough to be considered gay. It's an obvious 'character'.
3) Russia got straight-males vote + MTV kids vote imho

I don't see how this year was any gayer than previous ones.

----------
Serebro Promo CD (13 tracks)
Orange version and Red2 are confused in this one, imho.

[spyretto]

Originally Posted by the unforgiven

forre, here you go : State of the Ark
btw, my favourite is Clamour for Glamour it rocks my socks
you're right they have their own glam-rock-chabada-style (and no, chabada means nothing lol)

Yeah, gayist not gay...and not the only ones: Denmark gay, Sweden gay(ist), UK gay, France gay, well, about half or more of them in fact.



As for the Ark, I listened to some of the songs in those links and they must have sent their worst ever song to the ESC, because the other songs are way better. They must have ended up choosing a song that they thought it'd fit the ESC sterotype - that's why they blew it.

This discussion about the Eurovision audience...I wonder what they are. I think it's different in every country and you can't really categorise it as kids, housewives or whatever. I think it's mixed more or less.
In Greece it has got tremendous interest since we won it and it attracts all types of audiences.. They broadcast programmes after programmes months before the event and don't limit themselves to the Greek/Cypriot entries, as they used to do. Greece, Turkey are countries who follow the trend and where Eurovision is fashionable again. In the UK it's got little interest. They didn't even show the usual behind the scenes programme they do every year on BBC3...they replaced it with a programme about old Eurovision hits ( the usual Abba, Brotherhood of Man etc. )
It still gets good ratings in the UK though, and it seems it will get bigger once - and if -the UK starts doing well again.

[Sabeena]

OMGG!! UK never has any decent entries..Scooch?? wtf their song doesnt make sense

Would you like something to suck on whilst landing sir?

i swear they say something along those lines around the end of the song.. who the hell buys this song?? i cant believe its in the top 5 of the UK chart :O .. well at least they actually got SOME points not like one of the previous UK entries who managed to receive 0 points :P

[la aurora]

In Russia it's more of sport event, I guess and it's a Love-Hate relationship. We try to make this contest sound as lame and not important as possible but at the same time it gets a lot of interests in media, on forums etc. All major channels had reports on Serebro before the contest and most mentioned results in the News, interviews appeared in many printed media, in some girls made it to the cover being completely unknown before.

I'd say majority of viewers are pretty young here. Since 2000 we were sending MTV material, artists with quite a fan-base behind them. Younger audience uses Internet actively and knows about the thing in advance (some threads on Russia's entry alone got over 100 pages long this year), older audience finds out about the thing only when Channel 1 starts those adds few days before the contest and watch it as they watch important soccer matches or Olympics (ie 'let's see how RUssia does there').

I was seriously surprised this year when on the 1st of May my mother already knew who represents us this year. She doesn't watch TV much and doesn't read papers at all, so this means the coverage of the event was really impressive. Bet 4 tops 3 in 8 years have something to do with it. If we win one day, reaction will be as big as when CSKA won UEFA Cup = huge.

[haku]

The controversy has made it to the British parliament, with some MPs calling for the withdrawal of the UK.

And powerful German newspaper Bild has launched a campaign for the withdrawal of Germany.

[la aurora]

Originally Posted by haku

The controversy has made it to the British parliament, with some MPs calling for the withdrawal of the UK.

And powerful German newspaper Bild has launched a campaign for the withdrawal of Germany.

And then they say our politicians get paranoid over nothing...

I've read some reactions on BBC site and it really shocked me how so many Brits believe they are hated in Europe. What also got my attention is how huge number of countries get labelled as 'Russian countries' or 'ex-Russian countries'. People clearly don't see the difference between USSR and Russian Federation and still think of those countries as they are part of sove evil anti-west and anti-UK system. I've seen quite a few suggestions to make 'NATO only' or 'EU only' contest. I mean wake up already. These countries aren't satellites of Russia. Many of those are part of EU and NATO. It really sucks how they are gladly accepted in there for strategical reasons but at the same time fully rejected on mentality level.

[haku]

Well, many Brits don't like anything about "Europe" to begin with, they actually often use the word as if their island was not part of the continent at all, so any "Euro" topic is an opportunity for some of them to rant endlessly how everything European is awful and anti-British.

Beyond that, i think a power struggle has started between the EBU and the Big 4.
On one side, it seems that the EBU wants to get rid of the special status of the Big 4 (direct qualification) while still making them pay huge contributions. On the other side, it seems that the Big 4 want to reduce their contributions (because Eurovision ratings have been dropping, because there are more countries that can provide, and because the new 'geography' of the contest makes it very difficult for the Big 4 to obtain good results) while keeping their special status.
As often, this should end up with a compromise, the Big 4 losing their special status in exchange of a significant reduction of their contributions.

[forre]

Originally Posted by haku

On one side, it seems that the EBU wants to get rid of the special status of the Big 4 (direct qualification) while still making them pay huge contributions.

EBU wants to change the system with semi-final because going through the semi-final gives advantages in the final. EBU are working now at a system with 2 semi-finals, so if they keep BIG 4 automatically in the final, it will be a big disadvantage any way.

As for UK, it's all a big LOL. The truth is that even if to eliminate all "new" countries from the contest, UK would still have ended up last. It's all so silly.

[haku]

Originally Posted by forre

EBU wants to change the system with semi-final because going through the semi-final gives advantages in the final. EBU are working now at a system with 2 semi-finals, so if they keep BIG 4 automatically in the final, it will be a big disadvantage any way.

No argument there, i've always been against the Big 4 rule, it's completely unfair, none of the Big 4 would have been in the last 3 or 4 finals without the rule and that would have been all the better.


************
TV ratings in France were not good for Eurovision this year…

France 3 only got an 18.5% audience share (or 3.5 million viewers) for the Eurovision final, a 30% drop from last year.

The most watched channels that evening were:
France 2 with a 34.3% audience share for the final of the French Football Cup between Marseille and Sochaux.
TF1 with a 29.1% audience share for the highly popular series "CSI: New-York" (3 episodes in a row).

[spyretto]

Yeah but then, what it will come to, the BBC won't be showing the ESC final on prime tv anymore and the contest will die in the country. Some people were already complaining why the BBC postponed a Dr Who episode to show the contest instead. It could be shown on BBC3 which is a digital channel, they argue...if the UK was to be eliminated from the final they wouldn't show it at all.
Same for the other countries, I reckon.

Anyway, in retrospect I think Georgia and Moldova's entries were very good, if the contest took place now, I'd probably vote for them

As for the Brits being "hated" in Europe, well, they have something to do with it themselves don't they? The country is in a cultural backlash. Not that they're hated, just slightly disliked.

[haku]

Originally Posted by spyretto

Yeah but then, what it will come to, the BBC won't be showing the ESC final on prime tv anymore and the contest will die in the country. Some people were already complaining why the BBC postponed a Dr Who episode to show the contest instead. It could be shown on BBC3 which is a digital channel, they argue...

It's quite amazing that the UK is still showing Eurovision on BBC1, here in France the show used to be showed on TF1 (which was the main public broadcaster back then, it's private now), in the early 80s TF1 gave Eurovision to France 2 because ratings weren't good enough, and in the late 90s France 2 gave it to France 3 for the same reason, and when the semi-final was created France 3 kept the final but gave the semi-final to France 4, but with always lower ratings, even the final may go to France 4 as soon as next year.